Removing Plastic from Surplus Grain across Africa with Mobile Utility Storage
World Food Program and others Development agencies often recommend African growers use plastic cable ties and bags to store surplus grain.
Profile
I am passionate about: Rights for growers who want to be farmers... not miners.
A little known fact about me is: I worked with Esoko Africa to test the user-ability of the sms platform for a few years. "the value of [sms'd] knowledge is not always equal to the exposure it gets" (SIANA, 2015).
Show my name on the attendees list for events I am attending: Yes
LinkedIn: https://gh.linkedin.com/in/williamthomaslanier
Agronomist / Educator / Userability
NeverIdle Farms and Consulting (Ghana)
"Science is about argument, not agreement."
William Lanier was a Volunteer Services Overseas (VSO) placement with N. Ghana's "Ministry of Food and Agriculture" (MoFA) and an AGRA Seed grower. A MA Agricultural Education and Technology and career with Integrated Pest Management Extension (USA) offered research based insight about how protecting cereals and grains legumes against PHL is more meaningful than compensating for such loss by increasing production. A partner in NeverIdle Farms (Western Canada), and working exchanges to Australia and Denmark provided practical experience for NeverIdle (Ghana).
Research
11pt
Idea
166pt
Evaluation
1pt
Collaboration
1,186pt
Total
1,364pt
World Food Program and others Development agencies often recommend African growers use plastic cable ties and bags to store surplus grain.
The WFP recommend HarvestPlus & African school masters purchase plastic to store grain inside where students could otherwise study or lodge.
Mobile utility is a bridge between farms and transport to demand centers that will debunk myths like “metal storage is expensive."
Hello Lauren Ito and Kate Rushton,
Thank you for the challenge brief.
I am glad I noticed the "Surprise Us" Idea option.
Do you think it is relevant that the MacAurthur foundation seems unaware how on one hand MacAurther supports initiatives like "Let's fundamentally rethink the way we make, use and re-use plastics so that they don’t become waste in the first place", when on the other hand by promoting HarvestPlus biofortified grain without addressing the lack of adequate grain storage MacAurther promotes needless plastic waste (not to mention aflatoxin <www.agrilinks.org/aflatoxin>), by ignoring already available fundamental solutions that eliminate non-recyclable small-format and large format plastic waste.
For example, even though it might seem large packaging items like the plastic bags used to store surplus grain in Africa are already widely recycled,
- in Africa small format and large plastic containers are not recycled, they are burned or left to decompose everywhere.
- everywhere but Australia, the idea that grain storage can be as dynamic as the problems it solves is new and unique.
- the solution is human centered poised to make grain more nutritious and lives spent doing tedious primary processing easier.
- the solution can be accelerated, cost-effectively with leases and scaled up and down to control real local problems on the ground like environmental and food degradation.
Comments and suggestions welcome,
William
Hello Yann Hirlimann,
Nice approach to removing plastic.
How would members of ImagiNation Afrika, approach removing triple plastic bagging from African grain storage?
William
Removing plastic from surplus grain storage in Africa
William commented on Removing Plastic from Surplus Grain across Africa with Mobile Utility Storage